Women make up the majority of voters in states passing restrictive abortion laws. 53% of voters in 2020 in Oklahoma were women, and they voted for Donald Trump 62-37. In Mississippi (the state that enacted the law that was upheld in Dobbs) women outnumbered men 55-45, and voted 56-43 for Trump. Conservative women are the backbone of the anti-abortion movement, just as liberal women are the backbone of the pro-choice movement. And numerically, those two groups are evenly matched, with most women falling in the mushy middle: https://news.gallup.com/poll/388988/political-ideology-stead...
As to minorities, they are much more likely to view abortion as a morally complex issue than white liberals. The 25% or so of the Democratic Party that identifies as pro life is predominantly Black and Hispanic. In Georgia, for example, Black people and white people have identical views on abortion—half of Black people oppose it, despite voting democrat: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-stu...
It’s incredibly frustrating when minorities are used as tokens and proxies to advance views that are predominantly held by white liberals. It’s goddamn disrespectful to their political autonomy.
> barely even touches on the real experiences of women and minorities who will be the ones whose lives are most affected as a result of the new laws being passed.
I qualified "women and minorities". There are many women and minorities who will not be affected at all by a ban on abortion. Specifically, the wealthiest ones can afford to have high-minded philosophical opinions about what life is, because if/when they ever encounter the real need for an abortion, they can just get one! And we know they will because that's what history and experience shows us happens in places where abortions are banned; abortions are not eliminated, they are just displaced and made more dangerous.
But that doesn't change the fact that the people who will be most affected by these bans, the people whose lives are on the line, are in fact women and minorities. And it doesn't change the fact that real experiences of actual people are completely missing from the discussion here. I mean, if you want to take your position, where is the discussion from the pro-life crowd about people who weren't aborted and appreciate that? Or the people who decided against an abortion and what changed their mind? That would be a good discussion to have too and would reify the whole philosophical debate. But that's absent as well!
And I'm sorry it so frustrates you that you believe minorities are used at proxies to advance views that are predominately held by white liberals and find it so disrespectful, but a lot of people also feel that you championing the government to control our bodies is indeed very disrespectful, so there's enough disrespect to go around.
> And it doesn't change the fact that real experiences of actual people are completely missing from the discussion here. I mean, if you want to take your position, where is the discussion from the pro-life crowd about people who weren't aborted and appreciate that? Or the people who decided against an abortion and what changed their mind? That would be a good discussion to have too and would reify the whole philosophical debate. But that's absent as well!
And rightly so, because there's not much that's going to be accomplished by arguing from cherry-picked anecdotes. Moreover, the perspectives of women who have deep trauma and regret for their abortions have been firmly pushed out of the public debate for my entire life (indeed, for as long as I've been alive, the "debate" has only been pro-choice people arguing against straw men).
> And I'm sorry it so frustrates you that you believe minorities are used at proxies to advance views that are predominately held by white liberals and find it so disrespectful, but a lot of people also feel that you championing the government to control our bodies is indeed very disrespectful, so there's enough disrespect to go around.
Honestly, if you can't participate without inflaming the discussion in each of your comments, maybe just take a beat before commenting?
> Specifically, the wealthiest ones can afford to have high-minded philosophical opinions about what life is, because if/when they ever encounter the real need for an abortion, they can just get one!
Excerpt it’s overwhelmingly the wealthy minorities—the ones assimilated into highly educated majority white spaces—that agree with white liberals on this. It’s the working class ones and first generation immigrants that view abortion with more skepticism. Among Hispanics, just 29% of the ones who speak Spanish at home believe abortion should be legal, and 41% of first generation immigrants.
> a lot of people also feel that you championing the government to control our bodies is indeed very disrespectful, so there's enough disrespect to go around.
Those people can make their arguments based on individual liberty on their own dime. Why bring minorities into it?
If I’m being cynical, the reason is that the highly educated white people who have categorical beliefs about personal autonomy—and also usually reject religion—realize they aren’t a sympathetic political grouping. So they use women and minorities as a cover.
And that’s wrong! You’re trading on other people’s identities to advance libertarian views that most of them reject. You’re treating them as subjects in an application of your own philosophy of personal autonomy, instead of independent members of the body politic that have their own positions on these issues—positions that don’t reflect libertarian philosophies about personal liberty.
Women and men don’t significantly differ in their views toward abortion: https://www.vox.com/2019/5/20/18629644/abortion-gender-gap-p....
Women make up the majority of voters in states passing restrictive abortion laws. 53% of voters in 2020 in Oklahoma were women, and they voted for Donald Trump 62-37. In Mississippi (the state that enacted the law that was upheld in Dobbs) women outnumbered men 55-45, and voted 56-43 for Trump. Conservative women are the backbone of the anti-abortion movement, just as liberal women are the backbone of the pro-choice movement. And numerically, those two groups are evenly matched, with most women falling in the mushy middle: https://news.gallup.com/poll/388988/political-ideology-stead...
As to minorities, they are much more likely to view abortion as a morally complex issue than white liberals. The 25% or so of the Democratic Party that identifies as pro life is predominantly Black and Hispanic. In Georgia, for example, Black people and white people have identical views on abortion—half of Black people oppose it, despite voting democrat: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-stu...
It’s incredibly frustrating when minorities are used as tokens and proxies to advance views that are predominantly held by white liberals. It’s goddamn disrespectful to their political autonomy.